In recent years, as an imaging apparatus such as a digital still camera, a digital video camera, and a camera built in a mobile phone is spread, contents such as still images or moving images that have been photographed at various events such as trips or wedding ceremonies are increasing.
In addition, people have an increasing opportunity to present photographed contents on screens of TVs or mobile terminals, and enjoy the content sharing with other people such as friends, acquaintances, family members, and lovers.
In such occasions, however, a user who owns the contents is required to select the contents to be browsed one by one, taking into consideration about topicality between all the users sharing the contents, or privacy in sharing. This is cumbersome and involves a certain amount of time.
In view of the above, there is proposed a method, in which the contents are automatically selected depending on the users who browse the sharing contents, and the selected contents are presented. For instance, patent literature 1 proposes a method, wherein a degree of intimacy between subject persons is calculated based on subject person information (such as the distance between persons, frequency of appearance, and the number of persons) of the contents, and presentation of a content including a user who has a high degree of intimacy with the browser user is prioritized.
Further, patent literature 2 proposes a method, wherein in the case where a content owner user browses a content with other user, presentation of a content including a user whose degree of intimacy with the content owner user is lower than the degree of intimacy between the content owner user and other user is prioritized, whereby presentation of the content which should be private for the content owner user is prevented.
However, patent literatures 1 and 2 merely disclose configurations of presenting a content including a specific person such as a user having a high degree of intimacy or a low degree of intimacy with a certain browser user. Therefore, in the configurations disclosed in patent literatures 1 and 2, it is impossible to output contents by increasing the priority of a content having a high topicality degree for all the browser users and by lowering the priority of a content which is inappropriate for sharing, such as a content which some of the browser users do not wish to browse due to a difference in worthiness between the users. As a result, in the case where contents are browsed by multiple users, there is a problem that presentation of a content which is not interesting to browser users other than a certain browser user or users, or a content which is not agreeable to a certain browser user or users may be prioritized.